Did you know that on almost every day of the year, at least one member of the New York Yankee's all-time roster celebrates a birthday? The posts of the Pinstripe Birthday Blog celebrate those birthdays and offer personal recollections, career highlights, and trivia questions that will bring back memories and test your knowledge of the storied history of the Bronx Bombers.

October 21 – Happy Birthday Bill Bevens

It took big Bill Bevens eight seasons to pitch his way up the ladder of the Yankee Minor League organization in the late thirties and early forties. He may never have taken the final step if it weren’t for the parent club’s pitching shortage caused by WWII. The six foot three inch right-hander went 4-1 for the 1944 Yankee team and in the process proved he had good enough stuff to earn a shot at making the post war Yankee rotation. He then proceeded to put together 13-9 and 16-13 records for New York the following two seasons and his 2.26 ERA in 1946 was the fourth best figure in the American League. But he also threw 249 innings during that ’46 season, far more than he had ever been asked to pitch since he first broke into the minors.

The wear and tear on Beven’s right arm began to show during the 1947 regular season. His walks per inning and ERA both climbed and he won just 7 games while losing 13. Still, Yankee Manager Bucky Harris had enough faith in the Hubbard, Oregon native to start him in the fourth game of ’47 World Series versus Brooklyn. The contest took place at Ebbets Field and for eight and two thirds innings, Bevens held the Dodgers hitless. It wasn’t what you would call a masterpiece performance. Up to that point he had already walked ten guys and given up a run because of his wildness but it was the World Series for God’s sake and as he faced Dodger pinch-hitter Cookie Lavagetto with runners on first and second, there was still a big “0” under the “H” alongside the “Home” team on the Ebbets Field scoreboard. Bevens was on the threshold of making history!

But instead, Lavagetto swung late but hard on a Bevens’ fastball and hit it down the right field line. The Yankees were playing Cookie to pull and by the time right fielder Tommy Henrich got to the ball, both Dodger base runners were well on their way to scoring the tying and game-winning runs. Fortunately for Bevens and the Yankees, New York would go on to win the Series in seven games and big Bill would pitch very well in relief in that seventh game.

Bevens then showed up at the Yankee’s 1948 spring training camp with a sore arm. The guy who was one batter away from throwing the first World Series no-hitter in big league history just four months previously, would never again throw a pitch in a big league game. After spending the first eight seasons of his professional baseball career pitching in the Minors trying to get to the Majors, Bevens spent the last six years of his career doing the exact same thing. He finally gave up trying in 1953. He died in 1991 at the age of 75.

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